NO TOMATO LEFT BEHIND

“My body and soul are yearning for some home grown food,” I told a friend to explain why I was going to grow radishes.

“You see, the planting season is over for most crops, but I need something to keep me going until next spring, and I was told that it is not too late to grow radishes.”

“Actually there is a fall crop,” she said. “You can still plant leafy greens like spinach and broccoli rabe.”

“And do you know where I can buy the seeds?” I asked, really cooking now.

Later that afternoon my husband, my son Robert and I were on our way to the only local nursery that stocks organic seeds. I was excited and with my husband I kept an eye out for the sharp bend in the road where we needed to make a left turn (my friend’s directions were a bit sketchy). We made the left turn and then a right and found the nursery.

I told the owner that I was starting a vegetable garden and was looking for something that I could still plant for an autumn harvest.

“There isn’t much left,” he said leading the way to the seed rack. “This is all we have,” he said, handing me a packet of spinach and one of crisphead lettuce seeds.

“What about tomatoes?” I asked.

“Too late for tomato seeds,” he said. “But you can buy a plant,they are twenty per cent off.” And he called a young helper to go outside with me to find a couple of tomato plants.

I happily followed my young guide to the front of the nursery. My heart was racing, I had resigned myself to having to wait until next year to grow my very own tomatoes; now it looked as if I could still have my homegrown tomato and mozzarella salad after all. Granted, someone else had started the seeds, but I could still love and nurture the young plants like a parent adopting a long hoped for child.

And there I was, staring at a few dozen tomato plants. How to tell which ones to go for?

“Do you have any heirlooms?” I asked hopefully. Alas, as though in a mirror image of my life, no heirlooms awaited me. I would have to create my own.

As I scrutinized the plants, I found myself fretting that I could not take them all. In the end I chose two small ones that seemed to hold within the promise of the fruit to come. And another one whose irrepressible life had caused it to grow fruit and branches beyond her maturity. As we tried to lift her up, one of her tender branches broke and hung by a thread. Oh dear, I thought, taking it into my arms, hoping that I would be able to nurse her back to health.

“Careful,” I cautioned the young man as he unwittingly broke the young branch of another plant he was trying to untangle.

“They are all going to be thrown out soon anyway,” he said.

“Why?” I asked dismayed, and saddened that I couldn’t take them all.

“I don’t know,” he replied shrugging his shoulders.

While I was selecting the tomato plants, my husband had bought a roll of fencing wire to protect them from the deer and other animals that come to our garden from the woods on the other side of the stonewall.

It wasn’t until after dinner that evening that we were able to turn our thoughts to the tomato plants waiting on the patio.

“Shall we get up early tomorrow morning to plant them?” my husband suggested.

“I think that we should plant them tonight,” I insisted.

And so he went out in the dark, pointed the car’s headlights toward an empty flowerbed and gave the spade and rake a little work out. I sat on the front steps taking it all in, while eating ice cream. The fireflies added their little spark to the night and punctuation to my contemplation. How many families, I asked myself, could have had salads and tomato sauces out of the plants left behind at the nursery? And what about the feelings of the plants at being thrown away in the rubbish? They too throbbed with the Divine spark.

“Are you going to help or just sit there and watch?” my husband asked as he unwound the hose and watered the freshly dug bed.

“I am thinking about the tomato plants that are going to be thrown away. And I am thinking that no tomatoes should be left behind!” I lamented. “So many people starve in the world and here we throw food away.”

“And before I douse you, come and dig three holes for these tomatoes,” my husband said waiving the hose playfully.

I dug three equally spaced holes and Hugh put the plants in. For the time being, their branches are propped up on the stone wall and the wire fence protecting them is leaning against it. They are as safe and comfortable as can be and as someone once said, tomorrow is another day.

Esmeralda

By the way I didn’t find any radish seeds but I am not disappointed.

And one more thing; at some point I’ll want to talk about the farmers’ plight as well as the case for being vegetarian even though in my family we do enjoy meat.